Pines Plans Academic Village

Charter Schools, Branch Library, College Satellite Part Of Complex

Not content to be the first city in Florida to open a charter school, Pembroke Pines is moving ahead rapidly with plans for an even larger educational complex.

Plans for an ``academic village'' to be discussed tonight include a charter middle school, a charter high school for 1,200 students and, if all goes well, a library branch and a satellite campus of Broward Community College. Drawings also include a tennis complex, gymnasium, aquatic center and athletic fields.

Both BCC and county library officials approached Pembroke Pines earlier this year about the possibility of locating there.

``It's in keeping with what the public has been calling for, to bring education back to the neighborhoods,'' Pembroke Pines Mayor Alex Fekete said.

Neighborhood education, he said, naturally includes libraries and community colleges.

In January, the School Board approved an elementary school in Pembroke Pines. Work is under way on the $10 million, two-campus project that will include a 500-student elementary school and a 250-student preschool.

That complex is scheduled to open this fall.

Fekete hopes to run the charter school for about half what is spent by the school district. He is also planning to use city resources to keep those costs down without taxing city residents.

Pending School Board approval, the middle school would open in 1999 on the same site as the elementary school, at Northwest 184th Avenue and Pembroke Road.

The number of children at the middle school has yet to be determined.

Fekete said he was not ready to discuss possible sites for the academic village, but he said it would take about 40 acres.

Earlier this year, Pembroke Pines became the first city in the state to be granted an application for a charter school, which is a free public school financed by state money but operated by individuals or groups other than the school district.

The middle school is a natural outgrowth of the elementary school, Fekete said.

Whether the city goes ahead with a high school will depend on plans by the school system to build additional schools in the area, Fekete said.

Schools have been crowded in the fast-growing community in southwest Broward since 1990, Fekete said, and it now has only one high school within its city limits _ Flanagan High, named for former Mayor Charles Flanagan.

Although it opened less than two years ago, Flanagan has 3,300 students, almost 700 students over capacity. Some Pembroke Pines students attend high schools in neighboring communities.

If the city decided to build the charter high school, it could be ready to open in the 2000-2001 school year, according to a report by the city's consultant for the project.

The branch library and the BCC campus also hinge on other factors.

Pembroke Pines could be in competition with nearby communities such as Weston and Davie, which also have expressed interest in a library.

The branch library would likely go to the city offering the most desirable combination of land and financing, Fekete said.

Working in favor of Pembroke Pines is the fact that a regional library would work well in a complex that had schools and a college, said Pembroke Pines City Manager Charles Dodge in a memo to the City Commission.

Pembroke Pines was also approached by BCC officials in their quest for a new campus in the area, Fekete said. Last month, officials from the Broward County Libraries Division and BCC wrote enthusiastic letters about the educational complex to Dodge.

Fekete said he expected the City Commission to support the idea for more public schools. Although city officials have not broached charter status for a middle school with the School Board, he said the application process would probably be quick once it was begun.

Pembroke Pines' plans for a middle school and a high school are ambitious, but they are doable, said Tracey Bailey, who heads the state's office of charter schools.

Charter schools have opened with 700 to 1,000 students, including a combination middle-high school, he said.

However, those were existing schools converting to charter status, he said.

``There's an awful lot of work to get charter schools up and running, but we have seen successful schools of all types. And with Pembroke Pines' resources, they should be able to do it,'' Bailey said.

Three charter schools opened in Broward County last fall. Pembroke Pines' application for a charter elementary school was approved earlier this year.